UNDER THE DOME Comic-Con Panel Recap: Rachelle Lefevre and the Cast Discuss Stephen King’s Involvement and the Rest of Season 2

Although the cast and showrunner of CBS’s big summer sci-fi program Under the Dome, based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name, were there to promote their own show, stars Rachelle Lefevre and Alexander Koch got into the Comic-Con spirit by coming to their panel decked out in cosplays as characters from Battlestar Galactica and The Walking Dead respectively. Along with fellow actors Mike Vogel, Dean Norris, Eddie Cahill and Colin Ford and executive producer Neal Baer, Lefebvre and Koch discussed their characters, making the show, and teased the rest of the current season and what’s to come further down the line.

Hit the jump for our Under the Dome Comic-Con Panel recap.

The cast and crew just finished shooting this past Friday, and showed two preview clips from episode seven: one of Big Jim confronting Carolyn in her house, and one of Barbie falling into a dark abyss in the tunnels below the town while Julia looks on.

Baer also said that the show is moving closer toward people getting out of the dome, and that one might get out this season – perhaps a reference to Barbie’s fall. Vogel said that the tunnels were an “exciting and interesting way of broadening the scope for the world.” Baer later added that, with three to five seasons of the show planned out, he and the other producers and writers have a lot of story to tell, and that the tunnels “open up a whole new vista of storytelling.”

We will find out what Angie saw in the locker room before she died. Baer assured the audience that the show’s questions and mysteries will be paid off, as they were last season.

Of course, as Lefebvre pointed out, “for some of the characters, the dome’s not really their biggest problem.” Norris isn’t sure Big Jim and Junior will ever see eye to eye: “I keep trying,” he said, “but he’s a tough kid to raise… Part of our story is the difficulty of trying to raise a psychopath.” (Lefebvre, reasonably, replied: “Pot calling the kettle psychopathic…”) Though Norris says that Big Jim does love Junior, their relationship will remain fraught.

Baer says that a character that has previously only been “seen” on a website on the show (and online), HoundsofDiana.com, will appear in the flesh in episode 8.

Vogel revealed that upcoming episodes of the show will delve into Barbie’s past and family. We’ll get to come face to face with his father, and find out that despite seeming to come from working class stock, he could have been a trust fund baby: his military past was an effort to make a difference and push back against his upbringing.

Future episodes will also begin to explore how the rest of the world is reacting to the dome coming down. Viewers will get a glimpse of what the impact of and the reaction to the dome has been.

Baer and the actors were vocal about Stephen King’s continued involvement and support of the show while simultaneously making sure to point out that the show has far surpassed his original source text. While he reads every script and, in fact, wrote the first episode of this season, his novel takes place over the course of a single week, so the show has already taken a far different route. Baer described the relationship as collaborative, though he did note that King is always enthusiastic when the team makes the decision to kill off a character.

Speaking of which… when asked whether we’re going to see more deaths, Baer said of course: “no one is safe.” Although the body count was down at the beginning of the season, he promised that they would “rev it up” by the end. The writers, he said, call the ceiling of their office “heaven,” with photos of the dearly departed cast members tacked up there – including some viewers don’t even know about yet.

Under the Dome airs on CBS on Mondays, 10/9c. Click here for more Comic-Con coverage.